Monday, October 19, 2009

Wild Things Tame...

I'm very hard on films that attempt to conjure and play with our core beings, so I'm going to say no to Where the Wild Things Are. It was just too promising a set up and too soft a solution. For a movie about teeth it's awfully gummy. For a child's-eye-view, it's just too cute and cuddly a wildness we get here. Childhood is propelled by dark, morbid, thinly-veiled erotic fantasies, so if you're going to fetishize childhood, let's go all the way.

I credit Spike Jonze for the effort. It's an interesting film, but, ultimately, a tepid one. And no, the plottless-ness was not an issue for me. I find plot overrated and I applaud Mr. Jonze for allowing himself this freedom. There are some amazingly raw and wandering emotions up on screen, but they're just packaged wrong and fail to add up. One scene after another just skids along the surface in an A.D.D. frenzy of forced actions and missed opportunities. Furthermore, those monsters really bugged me. Those voices, aye yi yi! Strangely, I liked the ending, it's abruptness was effective. The mother and child scenes were really well done.